Structure

The Index sets out a formulation of inclusion based on labour
market inclusion and civic citizenship. It sets out a comprehensive
set of policies that Member States can use to facilitate immigrant
inclusion. Inclusion requires more than just access to the labour
market. Work is not enough - for immigrants to be included
successfully into society, they need to feel secure, and to feel that their
contribution over time is valued.The policies that can create these
favourable conditions over the long term are in the areas of labour
market inclusion, long term residence; family reunion;
naturalization, political particiaption and anti-discrimination.

The Normative Framework

The Index presents data that illustrates to what extent Member States
are living up to the commitments they have made to promoting
immigrant inclusion. The Index measures to what extent the
countries are making concrete their promises of equality.
We have constructed a common analytical framework,
informed by a set of normative criteria that are derived largely from
Member State commitments. The normative criteria allow us to
build a common framework against which to hold Member States up
for comparison. This framework allows us to compare countries in
two respects. Firstly, it allows us to compare countries against the
framework of desirable policy, in other words, the spirit of past
promises. Secondly, it allows us to compare countries against each
other's performance.
The normative framework sets out the policy conditions that are
most favourable to immigrant inclusion.The measures are about
creating favourable policy conditions for immigrant inclusion - they
do not describe immigrants' actual position in society or policy
effectiveness. That would require a different type of indicator.The
indicators do not establish whether or not inclusion has been
successful, but whether or not favourable conditions in policy and
law have been created.The normative framework is based on existing
EU legislation, international conventions and NGO proposals.
There are approxmately 100 indicators, categorised over five strands for the
five areas of immigrant inclusion policy.

The normative framework is, of course, based on certain value
judgements. This is necessary to create a common framework to
score policies. The normative judgements are based on mainstream
arguments in the inclusion discourse about equal treatment and
inclusion. The normative framework has been rigorously developed
and checked at a series of high-level expert consultations, involving
Europe's leading migration experts.

Labour market inclusion - Lack of access to employment has been
identified in the majority of countries as the most important barrier
to integration and therefore the most urgent political priority for
national integration policies. Restricting access to employment is
exclusionary, hinders mobility, and leads to a loss of skills in the
economy.

Residence - Long-term residence can be secured by giving
immigrants the status of Long Term Resident, which grants them as
equal treatment as possible with EU citizens. The status enables them
to contribute to society whilst maintaining their links with their
country of origin and to move freely within the EU.As legally
residing Third Country Nationals, immigrants should obtain a secure
residence status as soon as possible.Within this limited number of
years, they should be allowed to be absent for short periods.

Family Reunion is a basic human right and is vitally important for
immigrants' life and life planning. It also contributes to family
stability and thus to cohesive societies. An immigration policy that is
partly based on family migration may also help to address the age
imbalances of Europe's population. Immigrants should be entitled to
bring in their family members as soon as possible. Family members
should include spouse and dependent and possibly other family
members in ascending and descending line.

Naturalization puts immigrants on a par with EU citizens in terms of
rights and obligations, allowing them to become active citizens.
Immigrants are to be encouraged to naturalise and policies should
provide easy access to nationality while making a distinction
between first and subsequent generations of immigrants.
Immigrants and their family members should have access to
nationality after a limited number of years, and the second and
subsequent generations should acquire nationality automatically at
birth.

Anti-discrimination promotes equality, a basic human right common
to all Member States. It applies to immigrants and citizens
irrespective of their (immigrant) background and to relations
between and within various groups in society. It helps to eliminate
the obstacles for active economic, social and cultural participation of
all citizens in society.The grounds of anti-discrimination should
include race and ethnicity, religion and belief, as well as national
origin and nationality. It should cover, at least, employment,
provision of public and private services, education and training.

Politicl Participation - new for 2006 Index

The Dimensions of Policy

So far,we have divided inclusion policy according to the  strands
- or areas - described above. The Index also uses a second level of
division - it examines the different dimensions of policies. For each
of the five areas of immigrant inclusion policy, the Index examines
four important dimensions of the statuses and protections that
immigrants enjoy. Thus, each of the five strands is further divided
into four dimensions.

• Dimension 1
  What are the eligibility requirements for the status? What is the
  scope of anti-discrimination legislation? How easy is access to the
  labour market?
• Dimension 2
  What are the conditions that immigrants need to fulfil to access the
  status? What are the remedies available in cases of discrimination?
  How secure is employment?
• Dimension 3
  How secure is the status? How strong are the equality agencies which
  monitor anti-discrimination? What labour market integration
  measures exist to facilitate migrants' inclusion?
• Dimension 4
  What are the rights associated with the status? What are the pro-active
  policies in place to combat discrimination?

The Scoring System

The normative framework describes the best direction that policy
could take to create favourable conditions for immigrant inclusion.
The Index is built up from approximately 100 indicators, each relating to a
very specific policy in one of the five strands. For each indicator, the
normative framework is translated into three options, which reflect
the most to least favourable policy for immigrant inclusion.The
three options reflect the favourable, less favourable and least
favourable conditions for immigrant inclusion.The ‘favourable'
option summarises NGO proposals and the more liberal provisions
in existing international instruments (in particular Free Movement
of EU Citizens, Long Term Residence Directive, Family Reunion
Directive and Nationality Convention). The ‘less favourable' and
‘least favourable'options are rephrased versions of the more
restrictive provisions of the directives. For each indicator, each
country was therefore given a score of 1, 2 or 3 to reflect how
favourable its policy is in the given indicator area. Thus, a score of 3
for a given indicator means that the specific policy the indicator
refers to is favourable to immigrant inclusion in that particular
Member State.10

In a small number of cases, there were no policies or legal
provisions at all for a certain indicator. In most of these cases (and
with the agreement of the expert for that country), the country was
given a default value of 1 for this indicator.Having no policy equates
to having no guarantee, no protection, no entitlement or at best an
ad hoc approach, which the normative framework does not favour.

To summarise - the Index is built up from almost 100 indicators.
Each country is given a score of 1, 2 or 3 for each indicator depending
on which option - least favourable, less favourable or favourable -
is selected.The indicators are grouped into five strands (Labour
Market Inclusion, Long-Term Residence, Family Reunion,
Naturalization,Anti-Discrimination).Within each of the five
strands, the indicators are divided into four dimensions.The four
dimensions are consistent across the five strands as far as possible.

To allow us to analyse the results usefully,we have calculated averages
and indices from the numerous, complicated indicator results
collected.
The strand average per country is calculated as the average of all
the indicators in the strand. So, for each country, there are five strand
averages.
The dimension average per country per strand is calculated as
the mean of all the indicators in the dimension, in the strand. So, for
each country, there are four dimension averages per strand.
Note - The strand average is NOT the mean of the four dimension
averages. This is important, as the dimensions each have a
different number of indicators. If the strand average were simply
calculated as the mean of the four dimensions, each indicator would
hold a different weight in the strand average. Therefore, each
indicator holds an equal weight in the strand average.
For each strand, the EU average is calculated, as a simple
arithmetic mean of the 15 scores.

Index values and score values

The results are presented in two equivalent formats - score values
and index values.

The score values compare countries to the normative framework,
and describe how favourable (from favourable to least favourable)
their civic citizenship and inclusion policies are.
For each indicator, each country is given a score of 1, 2 or 3. Once
these scores have been aggregated into the strands and dimensions
(i.e. once the averages have been calculated), there are many more
degrees of variation between the countries. This is obvious, as we
have moved from 3 degrees of variation at the indicator level (there
are only three options for each indicator!) to an average of almost
100 indicators. The average is given to 2 decimal places. It is therefore
possible to take a more nuanced reading of the score values, by taking
a more detailed look at the differences between the countries' scores.
The meaning of the score, in terms of its favourableness for
immigrant integration, is described on the table below. These
descriptions should be read as the ‘key' to the assessment ofMember
State performance - they explain what a given score really means in
terms of immigrant inclusion policy.

The Index values compare countries to each other. This 1-3 range
of scores is converted into an Index, standardising to a base of 100 =
EU Average 2004 for every dimension, strand and the overall result.
A score over 100 means that a country is exceeding the EU average
for a given strand;whilst a score below 100 means that a country is
falling short of the EU average. For example, a score of 107.5 on the
Anti-Discrimination strand means that the Member State's policies
on anti-discrimination are just above the EU average in terms of
their favourableness to immigrant inclusion.

The Index scores are given to 2 decimal places.We can calculate
when a difference between two scores is significant.